<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Hi Marit and everyone else!</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">So, Harald, Suzanne van der Meer and myself are working on a project called "Nijmegen Typological Survey (NTS)". We're surveying a wide variety of structural features in African languages. The survey itself is based on previous work by Ger Reesink, Michael Dunn et al on languages of Australia and Melanesia. In other words, we have information on 198 languages from the previous publications and are now expanding it with approximately 70 African languages. Included in the survey are a large set of questions concerning systems of nominal classification, including a few on semantics. I list those here below.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The features below have been filled in for approximately 200 languages, mainly of Australia and Melanesia.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="501" style="border-collapse:collapse;width:501pt">
<colgroup><col width="38" style="width:38pt">
<col width="463" style="width:463pt">
</colgroup><tbody><tr height="19" style="height:19pt">
<td height="19" class="" width="38" style="height:19pt;width:38pt">F051</td>
<td class="" width="463" style="width:463pt">Is sex a relevant category in
the noun class/gender system?</td>
</tr>
<tr height="19" style="height:19pt">
<td height="19" class="" width="38" style="height:19pt;border-top-style:none;width:38pt">F052</td>
<td class="" width="463" style="border-top-style:none;width:463pt">Is shape a
relevant category in the noun class/gender system?</td>
</tr>
<tr height="19" style="height:19pt">
<td height="19" class="" width="38" style="height:19pt;border-top-style:none;width:38pt">F053</td>
<td class="" width="463" style="border-top-style:none;width:463pt">Is animacy
(without reference to sex) a relevant category in the noun class/gender
system?</td>
</tr>
<tr height="19" style="height:19pt">
<td height="19" class="" width="38" style="height:19pt;border-top-style:none;width:38pt">F054</td>
<td class="" width="463" style="border-top-style:none;width:463pt">Is plant status
a relevant category in the noun class/gender system?</td>
</tr>
<tr height="19" style="height:19pt">
<td height="19" class="" width="38" style="height:19pt;border-top-style:none;width:38pt">F192</td>
<td class="" width="463" style="border-top-style:none;width:463pt">Are the
phonological properties of the noun stem a relevant category in the noun
class/gender system?</td>
</tr>
<tr height="19" style="height:19pt">
<td height="19" class="" width="38" style="height:19pt;border-top-style:none;width:38pt">F116</td>
<td class="" width="463" style="border-top-style:none;width:463pt">Do verbs
classify the shape, size, consistency or position of absolutive arguments by
means of incorporated nouns, verbal affixes or suppletive verb stems?</td>
</tr>
<tr height="19" style="height:19pt">
<td height="19" class="" width="38" style="height:19pt;border-top-style:none;width:38pt">F177</td>
<td class="" width="463" style="border-top-style:none;width:463pt">Can the verb
carry a marker of animacy of argument, unrelated to the gender/noun class of
the argument?</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">If you or anyone else want to know anything more about features in our survey that concern nominal classification or the distribution of languages across these features, or just the NTS in general - I'd be happy to write a longer post here or send you more information in another manner. </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">/Hedvig</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-07-10 14:14 GMT+02:00 Marit Lobben <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:marit.lobben@psykologi.uio.no" target="_blank">marit.lobben@psykologi.uio.no</a>></span>:<br>
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<div><font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif" style="color:#282828;background-color:#ffffff"><span style="font-size:15px">Dear classifier system enthusiasts, </span></font><span style="color:#282828;font-family:calibri,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;background-color:#ffffff"></span>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">It was great fun to read all of your research foci! Now that we know each other better, it will be easier to know who to ask for what. </span></font></div>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">I and Hedvig took the initiative to form this group at the classifier conference in Surrey, and it proves now, although silent for a few
months, that this was a good idea, and hopefully discussions will catch on. </span></font></div>
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<div style="color:#282828;font-family:calibri,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;background-color:#ffffff">
<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">Let me introduce myself. My background is on the West African language Hausa. I am a general linguist but have done several psycholinguistic
fieldworks in Africa with Hausa-speaking children and adults (noun plurals and syntactic polysemy). After my PhD defense in 2010, I shifted grounds and started focussing on noun classifier systems. I have always been interested in the typology-universal properties
interface, and the tension between those. As I grew more interested in the shared semantic aspects of classifier systems I pondered upon their causes. Is it acquired, because humans tend to live in similar habitats? Is it due to our shared biology and make-up
of the body? Of course I am not naïve about cultural differences, or the fact that supposedly older systems more resembling noun classes and genders have a more mixed semantic make-up.</span></font></div>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">Nevertheless, my present approach to this is to investigate the biological basis for language, and classifiers in particular. So I trained
for neuroscientific methods at a psychology department and applied for a scholarship. In my postdoctoral project "The embodied cognitive bases for classifier systems" I investigate numeral classifiers in Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese by using functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), and scan (for the moment) native Mandarin speaking subjects while they semantically process (read) various numeral classifiers embedded in noun phrases. The technology and statistical procedures are appalling, but I have
good helpers. <br>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">I also have another project going on, where my research assistant register semantic classes of classifier system in an excel sheet. In
addition to articles in linguistic journals, I gathered about 80 dissertations on various classifier languages around the world, which will be the basis for a future conclusion on what semantic classes are more common, in what type of systems they are found,
the dispersion of these systems around the world, and so on. Once the data are collected there should be many ways to use the material. At the moment we have about 200 languages. </span></font></div>
<div style="color:#282828;font-family:calibri,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;background-color:#ffffff">
<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">It might be a good idea to give you a list of the languages we have, so that if any of you know about other languages, we could add it?</span></font></div>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">Best regards, </span></font></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<div style="color:#282828;font-family:calibri,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;background-color:#ffffff">
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">Marit Lobben</span></font></div>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px">P<font face="Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" color="black"><span style="font-size:16px">ostdoctor </span></font></span></font></div>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px"><font face="Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" color="black"><span style="font-size:16px">Department of psychology </span></font></span></font></div>
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<font face="Segoe UI WPC,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Microsoft Sans Serif,Verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px"><font face="Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" color="black"><span style="font-size:16px">University of Oslo</span></font></span></font></div>
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